Hey Guys,
Today I’m going to walk through the steps of resetting a Windows 10 PC back to factory defaults. This process restores Windows back to day 1; to its out-of-the-box settings and removes all installed programs. But what about your Windows profiles and personal files?  Before you start, there are 2 main options you need to be prepared to decide upon; keep data files or delete all data files. I’ll take you through both of these processes and explain the impacts of one option over the next.

Kicking off the restore process is quite simple

  1. To start the process, click START > Settings.
  2. Select Update & Security.
  3. Pick the Recovery option about halfway down.
  4. The first section here called Reset this PC, click the button, Get started.
  5. We are now at a big decision point; “Keep my files” or “Remove everything”.

Let’s talk about the first option. This one is great if you are having software issues, like Windows updates failures, operating system or Windows crashes or complex errors you just can’t figure out. Also, if your PC is performing slower than normal or if there is just a ton of junk programs on there you just want cleaned out.

When selecting “Keep my files”, here's what you keep and what gets deleted:

  • Kept – User profiles. This includes the files and subfolders under c:\users\USERPROFILE for each user, except Public. Within each of these profiles we have the desktop, documents, downloads, pictures, favorites, and videos. This means your profile will be saved including your user name and password to access Windows after the reset is complete.
  • Not Kept – As a part of the user profile, the AppData folder is not saved. This is application related data such as setting, program files and data specific to the apps on the PC.
  • Not kept – Back up to user profiles level there is a shared profile called Public. Like I mentioned, this will be deleted.
  • Kept – Files and folders are safe on the root of your C:\ drive (assuming that is the drive letter where Windows is installed).
  • Kept – No other drives are touched (like other connected internal or USB hard drives or thumb drives). This also would include any hard drive partitions.
  • Not Kept – Mappings however to network drives are dropped but the drives aren’t touched, just the access to the drives.
  • Not kept – Since programs will be removed, the program files under the folder Program Files, Program Files (x86), ProgramData, and Windows will all be deleted and replaced with the default or factory files. If you installed programs on another hard drive or partition, their future is questionable, depending on where the original files were installed and registered for the application. They won’t be deleted since only the C:\ is impacted but, if any of the install files ended up here on the C:\, the program may not work.
  • Not kept – Lastly, any shortcuts for applications on the desktop will also be removed, once the corresponding program is deleted.
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Option 2 is called; “Remove everything”. This is a more drastic reset and used when there are major application issues you cannot solve, if your PC has a virus you cannot get rid of, it’s the next step if the restore previous option of “Keep my files” didn’t solve your problems, or if you want to start over with a clean slate, like if you were going to sell or repurpose the PC. This process deletes everything which is deleted in the previous option, but “Remove everything” also wipes out all Windows profiles and everything on the C:\ drive. Personal data files are questionable, but we’ll get to that shortly. I’ll be using this PC as a dedicated Security Camera Network Video Recorder running the security camera management tool Blue Iris. I want a brand-new machine with a fresh install and nothing to impact its performance. By the way, these processes won’t impact any BIOS setting like firmware, boot sequence or RAID setup.

Before proceeding with any factory reset, I strongly encourage a backup of critical files such as data files, application settings files and any application license keys you may have in case you want to reinstall an application, after doing the cleanup. I’ll add a link for a good external hard drive in the description below if we need to do a backup before proceeding. I’ll also add a link to the 500GB SSD I have installed on this machine. Not only is it super reliable, it’s incredible fast and should make this recovery process less than 20 minutes.

Let’s go through the process of restoring this PC with option 1 (“Keep my files”). We’ll run through the “Remove everything” option shortly here:

Looking at my Documents folder where there are 3 files. One for Word, another for Excel and one PowerPoint. These files won’t be deleted but the associated programs will. There are some network drives which will get dismounted. In the Pictures folder, I have 5 cat pics, which will be saved. My desktop on the left-hand side should be wiped as these shortcuts are associated with programs that will be uninstalled. On my C:\ drive root, the files here will be saved.

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  1. Click START > Settings.
  2. Select Update & Security.
  3. Pick the Recovery option about halfway down.
  4. The first section here called Reset this PC, click the button, Get started.
  5. “Keep my files”.
  6. A notice letting you know Windows is going back to default, files in the locations we discussed earlier will be saved and apps and programs will be wiped.
  7. There is a link to show which programs will be removed. There are quite a few, so make sure you have backups or are prepared to lose these.
  8. Click Reset to proceed. And we’ll fast forward though this.
  9. That SSD saved me a lot of time. Only 15 minutes for this recovery. Here, I am prompted to login with my profile, which of course was protected in this reset option.
  10. A few icons on the desktop are saved since their associated apps were not deleted or a part of Windows, like Remote Desktop.
  11. There is a Removed Apps icon, and that contains a list of the programs which was removed.
  12. Let’s check out my files. My files in the Downloads folder are safe, same with Documents (but as you can see the icons are changed because Office was uninstalled), and Pictures are saved.
  13. I lost all my mapped network drives as expected.
  14. If I look at the root of my C:\ drive, folders which I have added are not impacted. There might be program files in here and the programs may be deleted, so a little clean up may be required here.
  15. When I go into Windows Updates, there are several updates pending, so my next step would be to install these.

Restore steps when selecting “Remove everything”

  • Same steps as before but when we get to this screen, we’ll select “Remove everything”.
  • Here, we see the data deletion setting in addition to removing programs. Let’s look at these settings.
  • These are the data removal options I was referring to earlier.
    1. “Data erasure” is how personal data files will be deleted. This is your Windows profiles and the root of the C:\ drive or additional drives you select in the next option:
      1. Off – Just deletes your files.
      2. On – Deletes your files and overwrites the file so they cannot be recovered. This is a good option if you are selling your computer and want to make sure your data is unrecoverable.
    2. The “Data drives” option is what drives will be wiped clean.
      1. Off – Will delete all the files from the C:\ drive where Windows is installed. Partitions on this drive are not impacted.
      2. On – Deletes all files from the C:\ drive and any other internal hard drives connected directly to the motherboard. This also includes any files or folders on partitions on these drives (The partition will not be removed but the files/folders will). If I check what drives are impacted, it says E which is a partition of my C. Connected USB Flash drives or USB external drives will not be impacted.
  • Click next to confirm the settings.
  • Confirm what will be reset and let’s kick-off the process. Fast forward.
  • Wow, that only took 10.5 minutes we are setting up Windows from scratch. That’s an impressive SSD.
  • Let me fast forward through this Windows setup.
  • All my icons are gone from my desktop as expected, that includes all documents and pictures
  • Let’s open Windows Explorer and I see lots of free hard drive space on my C:\ drive.
  • The root of my C:\ drive is cleaned up and we are back to factory defaults with all my old applications and junk data files removed.
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(as of September 18, 2024 15:39 GMT -06:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Alright guys, that covers all the options when resetting Windows 10 back to factory defaults. For me, my next step is to setup my machine as a dedicated Security Camera Recorder, in an upcoming video. I hope that you found this informative in understanding the restore options and how they impact the restore process in what’s saved and what’s deleted. Again, links for the drives are below. Please like and subscribe for more Home Tech projects. Thanks for watching.